


Five Times Bones' Hands Got Jim Hot and the One Time They Didn't

by savvierthanu



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Anal Play, Light BDSM, M/M, Nipple Play, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 09:08:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/951272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvierthanu/pseuds/savvierthanu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Legendary hands." Enough said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Sineala and Origami_Isopod for encouragement and fantastic betas, and Osprey_Archer for encouragement and title help.

1.

Sometimes, after a night out drinking, Jim goes to Bones’ dorm and pretends to be drunker than he really is.

It starts with the nights he strikes out in the bar (not often, everyone has their off days) but doesn’t want to spend the night alone (his roommate washed out mid-semester, and the room is just so _empty_ ), with or without orgasms. So he pretends he isn’t halfway to sober, wanders across the quad, and wheedles and begs and sometimes hacks his way into Bones’ cushy single to crash on his couch. He inevitably leaves with a crick in his neck and twenty minutes’ worth of bitching, but the bitching and the tweaked neck are worth the comfortable sound of Bones breathing and shifting as he sleeps in his bed across the room.

Sometimes, Jim is so drunk that the only thing he _can_ remember is the way to Bones’ room. Those are the nights that Bones will bitch less and spend the rest of his allocated complaining time examining Jim to make sure he hasn’t done anything stupid. He’ll manhandle Jim onto his couch and check him all over for injuries or new and exciting venereal diseases, his doctor’s hands moving swiftly and surely even as he squints and yawns and grumbles. Jim finds he likes being the center of Bones’ attention when there isn’t blood or broken bones involved, that he likes Bones’ big hands touching him with a purpose. So if Jim finds himself getting drunk to have an excuse to show up on Bones’ doorstep, well, that’s between him and his glass of whiskey.

Tonight, Jim doesn’t even realize just how drunk he is until Bones is glowering at him—hair askew and worn-out t-shirt on backwards from putting it on in the dark after Jim hit (i.e.: leaned on) the door chime—hissing “Goddammit, Jim, get your ass in here,” as he grabs for the collar of Jim’s jacket. He doesn’t even bother asking how or why anymore. He can tell Jim is very drunk because he leans right into Bones’ insistent tug instead of resisting it, stumbling over the threshold and almost into Bones, who stops him with a spread hand against his chest.

“Does your fool head know what time it is? It’s bad enough I spend all day treating cadets who don’t know their eyes from their assholes, but to come home to my own bed only to be dragged out of it by James The-T-is-for-Testing-My-Goddamn-Patience Kirk? You’re damn lucky I took an oath to do no harm, kid.” As he’s talking, he herds Jim to the couch like a sheepdog with unceremonious pokes and prods into Jim’s various soft places as Jim struggles out of his jacket and kicks off his boots. 

“How long—ack, quit it—have you been sitting on that one?” Jim asks, collapsing on the couch and scrunching up his face as the room lurches. Bones descends on him, checking his knuckles for evidence of fighting silently instead of answering him. Despite his anger, Bones is as gentle as ever, cradling Jim’s hands like every bone in them was broken. “Come on, Bones, is there no trust in the world? I’m hurt.”

“Where?” Bones snaps, looking up abruptly from his hands.

“In my _feelings_.”

That makes Bones grunt and roll his eyes as he grabs Jim’s face, big hands curling around his head and angling it toward him with the strong, insistent press of his thumbs under his jaw. And even though Bones is dragging down Jim’s lower eyelids more roughly than usual and glaring at his pupils like they’ve caused all the hurt and suffering in the world, Jim can’t help but sink into those warm, sure hands. So much so that his eyes drift shut and he hums a little in the back of his throat.

“Hey,” Bones growls, sharply tugging on the hair at the back of Jim’s head. Jim snaps to attention, a thrill that even copious amounts of alcohol can’t dull shooting down his spine. “Don’t you dare pass out on me before I get some water in you. I ain’t setting up any more drips in here for you to rip out on your way to take a leak.” Jim winces at the memory of The IV Incident as Bones stands and walks towards the bathroom. “And don’t you throw up, neither. My hospitality has its limits.”

Bones is a big softie who wouldn’t kick him out, but pointing that out has never gained Jim any traction. He rubs his face and considers removing an article or two of clothing. He feels hot and the tag of his shirt is making the back of his neck itch. The room spins sluggishly.

“Quit fidgeting.” Bones sits back down and Jim reaches for the glass of water in his hand, only for Bones to jerk his hand away. “Nuh-uh, kid. There’s enough painkiller dissolved in here to shut even you up during a hangover, and I am not wasting perfectly good medicine to watch you dump it all over yourself. ‘Specially since you can’t even take a hypo like a normal person without swelling up like a goddamn balloon.”

Jim pouts as Bones lays a hand against the back of his neck to steady him and lifts the glass up to his mouth. When the frown line between Bones’ eyes looks like it might etch itself all the way down to his brain matter, Jim drops the pout and tilts the glass the last half inch with his fingertips against the bottom.

Bones watches intently as Jim drinks, tilting the glass obligingly while his thumb makes small, unconscious, soothing movements back and forth beneath Jim’s ear. Jim doesn’t lean into it. Instead, he finishes the last swallow and shifts back a bit, watching as Bones gets up to refill the glass. “Do I get a prize?”

“Yeah, you get to wake up not feeling like a warmed-up pile of shit. Congrats,” Bones’ voice echoes from the bathroom. Jim picks at the frayed edge of the couch cushion and considers, not for the first time, climbing into Bones’ bed while he’s otherwise occupied. The couch has never been quite long enough for him and he hates sleeping with his knees awkwardly bent. Not enough to leave, though.

“Anything else?” Bones asks a few minutes later, placing the glass on the nearby table and crossing his arms over his chest.

Yawning, Jim moves to stretch out on the couch, shaking his head. “It’s kinda hot,” he mumbles, letting his eyes drift closed.

The palm is smooth and cool against his forehead. “You’re not. I’m leaving the climate controls where they are.”

“Pssh, I’m as hot as they come, ask anyone.” Bones’ hand disappears and Jim frowns, shifting to avoid the lumpier parts of the couch, but he can practically hear the eyeroll. “S’not fair, you’re just as hot, but I get all the grief.”

Jim hears a snort and the shush of fabric as Bones takes his shirt off, cracking an eye open just in time to see Bones’ bare shoulders disappear beneath the covers. “Get some sleep, Jim, you’re not talking sense,” Bones says quietly.

“Night,” he sighs, definitely not adjusting himself in his jeans and drifting off to the imagined feeling of Bones’ hands on his face and neck, deliberately working their way downwards.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

“You gonna finish that?” Jim asks, waving a lazy hand in the general direction of Bones’ lap. Bones looks down like he forgot he was holding a glass of bourbon and lifts the glass closer to his face, swirling the liquid slowly.

“Reckon I am,” he drawls, swallowing the contents of the glass and placing it on the table between them with a clink. “Sure as hell not giving it to you.”

“Spoken like a true only child,” Jim says, putting his feet up on the porch railing, leaning back to look at the starry sky. It’s a lot easier to see them out here in Napa than between the buildings in San Francisco. And it sure beats the holos they use in class.

“Yeah, well, look how I turned out versus how you turned out.” Bones stretches his long legs out in front of him, crossing his bare feet at the ankles. He looks more relaxed than Jim has seen him in weeks, all loose limbed and dressed down. They both needed the break after finals. This year has been brutal, and a week in a cabin in Napa seemed like the best antidote. So far it seems to be working.

“What? Old and cranky and boring? I think I’m good, thanks.”

Bones honest-to-God smirks, and damn if it isn’t sexy as hell. “You gotta lot to learn, Jim-boy.”

Jim lets the rumble in Bones’ voice wash over him for a minute before he answers. “Well, I’ll have plenty of time once we’re up there.”  He jerks his chin upwards.

“Reckon we both will,” Bones says, sounding resigned to the fact at this point. When Jim found out Bones had changed his posting request to active starship duty, he had laughed it off like it was inevitable, like it was the plan all along. The truth is that he’s grateful and more than a little relieved, and it hits him in the gut every day. He’s not sure how to express it to Bones yet, or even if he wants to. This thing between them is still new and strange enough that he hasn’t quite felt out the edges of it yet. It’s not like he’s stopped having sex with other people, and he certainly doesn’t expect Bones to give up whatever he’s got going on the side, but Bones is priority one by an order of magnitude. Several, even.

The stars wink and shine above him, beckoning. “I can’t believe they’re just a few semesters away—” Jim lets the awe into his voice this time.

“Mmmhmm.” Bones sounds less than pleased, his mouth twisted in that sour way he has.

He turns to look Bones in the eye, making sure that he’s paying attention. “There’s no one I’d rather have up there with me.”

Something in Bones’ face softens and he reaches over to squeeze his hand briefly. “I know, kid. Me too.” Jim smiles so wide it feels like his face might split in two. “Somebody’s gotta make sure you don’t end up causing some kinda space war, or worse.”

Jim just laughs, enjoying the way the corner of Bones’ mouth lifts in a lopsided smile. Then he leans over and presses his lips to it, breathing in the bourbon on Bones’ breath.

“So when do I get the syllabus?” he asks in his best seductive voice, waggling his eyebrows for good measure.

“For what?”

“Bones 101. I want to be prepared up there.” Jim moves to straddle Bones’ hips, the planks of the Adirondack chair digging into his knees a little painfully, but it’s worth it when Bones puts his hands on his hips in return, squeezing a bit. He’s always a little hesitant to touch Jim like this, as though Jim’s body is something that he isn’t sure he has a right to yet. He warms up quickly enough, but Jim has to go out of his way to initiate contact. He doesn’t mind, but misses when Bones’ touches were frequent and casual without the whirring of Bones’ thoughts behind them.

Hands slide up Jim’s sides, under his shirt, long fingers spreading out across Jim’s ribs. It tickles a bit, but Jim resists wriggling and rests his hands on Bones’ shoulders. “I’d say you’ve already passed that one,” Bones says thoughtfully.

“Oh, yeah? You mean aced it.”

Bones smirks and digs his fingers into Jim’s obliques. “Solid pass.”

“A ‘B,’ Bones?!” He tries his best to sound affronted. “I’ve never gotten a ‘B’ in my life.”

“Well, kid, there’s a first time for everything. The reputation for being a tough grader isn’t just hot air.” The hands move back and downwards, grabbing handfuls of Jim’s ass and hauling him closer. Jim has zero complaints when his half-hard dick presses against the hard planes of Bones’ stomach.

Grinding down a little, Jim pushes back into the touch. He smiles and bats his eyelashes. “But, professor, I’m on academic probation this semester and if I don’t get straight ‘A’s, they’ll kick me out. It’s always been my dream to be a veterinarian.” He pouts for good measure.

Bones snorts, completely unimpressed. “Seriously, Jim?”

“What? Veterinarians are sexy.”

“If you say so.”

“Go with it,” Jim mouths against Bones’ jaw. “Hot for teacher” always works in Jim’s experience, and he’s sat in when Bones was lecturing a few times. This isn’t a passing fantasy. He’s almost positive he could squeeze into the base of a lectern, he just hasn’t gotten a chance to test it yet.

Bones sighs and rolls his eyes, but he relaxes. Jim takes that as an invitation to move his hips in a slow, lewd circle. “There has to be some way I can improve my grade.”

“Hmm,” Bones considers (and Jim is internally delighted that he’s playing along), adopting his neutral doctor mask and giving Jim a pointed once-over. He flexes his hands on Jim’s ass, squeezing it firmly. Jim resists the urge to squirm in glee. “Let’s see. Insubordination. Tardiness. General disrespect for the material. Those are some serious infractions, Jim. Not to be taken lightly.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” he leans in to whisper the next words directly into Bones’ ear, “it sounds like I need to be punished.”

He pulls back enough to gauge Bones’ reaction, because, god, he wants this right now, wants Bones to say yes.

Bones’ lips pull back to bare his teeth in the filthiest smile Jim has ever seen in his life. “Why, Jim,” Bones says, a dangerous edge to his voice that would make any command track instructor choke on his or her own envy, “you read my mind.” And then he smacks Jim’s ass _hard_.

Startled, Jim jumps and gasps. But he presses back into Bones’ hands on the next breath. “Oh, _fuck_ yeah.”

The kiss surprises him. Nothing about it leaves any room for Jim to actively participate; it’s all Bones using his mouth to get exactly what he wants exactly how he wants it. And Jim is beyond fine with that, letting Bones’ tongue have its determined way with his mouth.                                           

“Fuck,” Jim exhales when Bones finally pulls away. His lips feel twice their usual size, and from the way Bones is staring at them, they probably are.

Bones’ chuckle is low and dark. “Now, Jim, I’m going to tell you how this is gonna go down. You’re gonna be quiet while I do that.” He raises an eyebrow pointedly, waiting for Jim to interject something. But Jim stays silent. This is too good to ruin. Satisfied that Jim doesn’t have anything to add, he continues. “When I’m finished, I’m going to ask you a question. You’re going to answer that question with ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ If the answer is ‘no,’ nothing changes. We continue sitting out here, enjoying our evening. We maybe have sex, we go to sleep, we wake up tomorrow and have breakfast, and that’s that.”

Jim has to bite his lip to keep from blurting out an expectant “But—?” _No_ isn’t really in his vocabulary at the moment. Bones waits him out until the urge passes.

“But,” Bones says deliberately after a pause, “If you say ‘yes,’ you will do exactly as I lay things out. You will not deviate, you will not backtalk. You will follow my every instruction to the letter”—Bones eyes darken and the smirk reappears—“and I will make sure you enjoy every millisecond of it.”

Breathing is suddenly something Jim has to remember how to do as Bones’ words and the way he had said them, fuck, the self-assured tilt of his _mouth_ , wash over him. Bones doesn’t dirty talk, he matter-of-fact talks. And somehow that’s a thousand times hotter. Jim has no idea how this turned from silly roleplay into a full-on scene, but he should have known that Bones does nothing by halves. And as confident and sexy and in control as Bones is right now, his eyes are practically screaming, _Is this okay? Is this too much? Did I fuck this up?_

Sometimes Jim thinks he needs to have words with a certain ex–Mrs. Leonard McCoy about what exactly she crushed under her heel just to see it break. Because the broken pieces he’s seen are pretty fucking beautiful on their own.

But Jim just nods and kisses Bones quickly, whispering, “You’re amazing” into his ear and squeezes his shoulders. Bones relaxes incrementally, the tension in his shoulders loosening under Jim’s palms, and he takes a deep breath, his fingers flexing against Jim’s ass like he’s reminding himself where all this was going in the first place. Hint: somewhere awesome.

Jim licks his lips and something in Bones’ eyes change, hardening the way they do when there are people to order around and lives to save.

“If you agree when I’m finished, this is what will happen: you’re going to go into the bedroom and take all your clothes off. By the time I get there, they’ll be folded and put away and you will be bent over the foot of the bed with your hands behind your back. You will be quiet, unless I ask you a direct question. If you break those rules you will be punished as I see fit. And then, if you behave, once I’m done spanking your pretty ass red, I’m going to fuck you until you scream. Now,” Bones drawls, “does that sound like something you might like, Jim?”

Jim can’t nod his head fast enough to convey how much he might like that. “Yes, yes, fuck yes, Bones, Jesus, yes.”

“Safeword?”

“More?”

Bones’ face darkens. “Absolutely not.”

“Okay, okay, Tribble.” He’s used it before. It’s one of the few words he’s come across that has essentially no sexual context. And Jim’s done extensive research. Bones raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything, so Jim tilts his face down for a kiss. The one he gets is slow and sweet and grateful, which Jim struggles to wrap his brain around after the searing heat of the previous one. He nudges his hardening dick against Bones’ stomach as a gently prodding reminder.

He’s stopped with a firm grip on his hips. “Do I have to remind you what you should be doing right now? Because I don’t like to repeat myself, Jim.”

Shaking his head, Jim extricates himself from Bones’ lap and heads inside, barely keeping from running down the hall. The pile of clothes he leaves on the chair in the corner wouldn’t pass Starfleet muster, but he figures Bones won’t be paying attention too closely. Jim fully intends to be as distracting as possible as he settles his torso down against the bed. He shifts his feet a comfortable distance apart, then edges them a little further, arching his back so his ass sticks up invitingly. He shouldn’t have to wait more than a few minutes.

His confidence begins to waver a bit when seventeen minutes go by and there’s no sign of Bones.

Jim is acutely aware by this point of the dull ache beginning in his shoulders and the slight cramping in his calves from the nervous curling and uncurling of his toes against the carpet. Sheer force of will has kept his erection from flagging, but he feels more exposed than he can remember being in a long time.

Cool evening air from the open window raises goosebumps all over his body. An old-fashioned clock ticks in the hallway.

He’s debating standing up and finding out what the hell happened when measured footsteps make their way down the hallway. Jim closes his eyes and lets out a heavy, relieved breath, squaring his stance and rolling his shoulders a bit.

The steps walk deliberately past him and over to the corner where Jim left his clothes, and Bones tsks disapprovingly. “Shoddy work.”

Jim wiggles his ass to divert Bones’ attention to where it really should be. He’s waited this long already, might as well jump into the good stuff. Movement catches the corner of his eye and he glances over to see Bones rolling up his sleeves deliberately, revealing the toned lines of his forearms. It hits him like a striptease, and Jim seriously questions why he never paid attention to them before. He closes his eyes in anticipation, excitement making his skin crawl. He hears the tinkling of Bones’ belt being unbuckled and he practically vibrates, his hands flexing at the small of his back.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you ‘Patience is a virtue’?” Bones’ voice is as steady and calm as Jim’s ever heard it. A warm hand squeezes the back of Jim’s neck, stroking down to his crossed wrists. “I’m going to bind your wrists to take some of the strain off your shoulders.” Jim just nods, waiting as Bones loops the body-warm leather around and between his forearms, tugging gently and checking the tightness multiple times. “Good?” he asks finally.

Jim nods, dragging his cheek against the comforter. The open-handed slap against his right asscheek takes him completely and utterly by surprise, forcing an undignified squawk out of him.

“When I ask you a question, I expect an answer, Jim. First warning. Now, are your wrists comfortable?”

“Yes,” Jim croaks, the shockwaves of the blow running over him in lazy waves as Bones runs an appreciative hand over the swell of his ass.

“Good,” Bones says calmly. “Settle in, I’m going to need you to count.”

Let it never be said that Leonard H. McCoy is not a man of his word. Jim can’t remember the last time he lost it during sex, completely giving himself over to sensation until the world was reduced to whatever his skin could parse. At a certain point, that just became Bones. Bones’ precision blows landing with loud cracks, rippling fire and lightning over his nerves. Bones maneuvering him bodily onto the bed, arranging Jim to his liking before opening him up with long, skilled, _hot_ fingers. And then Bones fucking him into the mattress, hips colliding with his sore ass on every thrust, one hand gripping the belt wrapped around his wrists like a set of reins, the other holding his head against the bed, muffling his sobs and incoherent screams of pleasure. And then his mouth, god, his _mouth_.

Afterwards, cleaned up, sated, and sore, Jim lies on his stomach on top of the covers, eyes drifting closed while Bones putters around the cabin getting ready for bed.

“Hey, darlin’.” Bones’ hand cards gently through his hair. He must have dozed off; he doesn’t remember Bones coming in. “You want me to get the regen?”

Jim’s ass is buzzing and feels kind of hot, but he’s enjoying it at the moment, like tangible white noise. “’M fine, thanks,” he says, mostly into the pillow. “Come to bed?”

The mattress dips as Bones perches on the side, careful fingers running over the abused skin. “You sure? You’ve got quite the bruise forming, not to mention all the welts. You might not be so happy in the morning when all the endorphins wear off.”

Jim pushes himself up to try and look over his shoulder. Sure enough, there’s a purpling bruise on the side of his ass that looks a fair amount like Bones’ open hand.

He smiles. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay with it.”


	3. Chapter 3

3.

The ceiling of Bones’ dorm room above his bed has approximately seven hundred and twenty-seven dimples per square meter. Jim knows this because he’s been counting them to stave off orgasm as Bones does his very best to render him insensible. It’s not that he’s complaining, far from it, but Bones is also determined to do everything but what Jim wants most: to get fucked hard and deep until he can’t remember failing the fucking _Kobiyashi Maru_ for the second fucking time.

“Bones,” he lifts his head up enough to glare at the space between his own spread thighs, “I think we’re well beyond the point of medical concern. Your dick, fantastic as it is, is not _that_ big.”

Bones looks up from where he’s sucking an impressive hickey into the soft skin of Jim’s inner thigh, grins wolfishly, and presses against Jim’s prostate with three fingers. “Sorry, Jim, what was that about medical concern?” He moves his fingers in a tight circle and Jim’s eyes roll back in his head. “Hm? Speak up, Jim-boy.”

Jim helplessly gurgles a moan, fisting his hands in the sheets as his back arches.

“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought.” He can feel Bones’ smirk against his hip before sharp teeth scrape over the protrusion of bone and the muscles in his stomach quiver.

Jim goes over the past few hours. Hours? Hour? Forty-five minutes? His sense of time is shot to hell. He remembers being dragged straight from the testing site to Bones’ room, angry and already scheming for his next go-round at the test. Bones had ordered takeout, poured him a drink, and listened as Jim ranted until, both their bellies full and warm with alcohol, he had leaned over and kissed Jim quiet.

They rolled around on the bed for a while, kissing and undressing each other, Jim pawing at Bones insistently while Bones’ hands roamed with a purpose. The first finger had been teasingly good as it worked its way inside him, making him want more. The second had been better, skimming over his prostate and creating more of a burning stretch, and the third had been so, so good because it meant that Bones was going to fuck him any minute. Right?

Except apparently not, because Bones has yet to fuck him with anything but his expert fingers, making him shake and leak all over himself. Bones won’t even wrap his disgustingly pretty mouth around him, just licks up his mess and sucks and nips marks into pale, sensitive skin, enjoying himself far too much.

Bones corkscrews his fingers in and out, and Jim’s dick twitches hard and he hears something that sounds suspiciously like a whine make its way out of his own throat. He immediately tries to mask it with a grunt, but he can hear Bones chuckling. “You’re thinkin’ too hard. Seems I need to give you something to think about.”

 _Yes_ , Jim thinks, _yesyesyesyesyes_. The fingers withdraw and Jim wants to crow with triumph, but they just push right back in, slicker than before, and it’s exactly the same for an instant until— _oh_ —what has to be Bones’ pinky slides in alongside the other three and it burns, wonderful and distracting, but it’s still not what he wants.

“Bones, I swear to god,” Jim pleads, digging his nails into his palms and curling his toes in frustration.

“I think you’ve done enough bossing for one day,” Bones says, pushing past Jim’s prostate and thrusting in and out slowly, way too slowly, making him feel full but not to the point of satisfaction. He wants Bones’ weight, his breath on his neck, his sweat, his mouth, he _wants_. “But if I’m gonna gag you I’ll have to sterilize my hand, and then the gag, and then start all over down here—” Jim makes a noise indicating how little he thinks of that plan. “—and I’d really rather just save myself the trouble.”                                                                                                                  

“You’re enjoying this too much,” Jim grits out, flexing his hips against the arm Bones’ laid across them to keep him still. 

Bones chuckles again. “It’s sex, Jim. I aim to enjoy myself.”

“Yeah, well, you enjoy sticking your dick in me. I’ve been there, seen it happen.” Bones raises an eyebrow. “Don’t even have to sterilize it first. Might even shut me up.”

“Tempting,” Bones muses, pressing his thumb against Jim’s perineum as he moves his hand, using it as leverage. Jim decides that it’s pointless to try to stifle his gasp and lets his hips roll as they will, heat pooling low in his stomach.

It’s entirely unfair. Bones’ hands are ridiculously well-suited for fine-motor control, but big and strong and masculine enough that he can give Jim anything and everything he wants. And on top of that, Bones is determined to _use_ them. Right now, Jim would break Bones’ fingers and ride him until his legs gave out if he didn’t think the pain would kill Bones’ hard-on. 

“Another time, maybe. Minus the finger breaking.” Shit. Jim bites his lip to prevent further outbursts. “But, you know,” Bones says thoughtfully, dragging out the vowels, his hand never stopping. He pauses, staring into the middle distance beyond Jim’s right knee, stroking his thumb over the skin behind Jim’s balls. “Yeah,” Bones rumbles, looking down at where he’s buried knuckles-deep into Jim. “You don’t mind being ridden hard and put away wet, now do you?”

Jim can feel his eyes widen and all the blood that isn’t in his dick rush to the surface of his skin, making him hot all over. He shakes his head slowly, trying to figure out where Bones is going with this despite how little of his brain is currently online.

Bones smirks. “Thought not.” His hand resumes fucking Jim, harder and faster than before.

 _Anyone_ , Jim thinks as his eyes roll up in his head, _Literally anyone else’s hand would be cramping and useless by now and they’d actually be_ fucking me.

He dimly registers something warm and wet and insistent working over his balls and is glad that he has the brain cells left to come up with _tongue_ before Bones says, “If you can get it up again, I’m gonna ride you like the Kentucky Derby” and ruins any chance of rational thought.

 _Wait_ , again?

But Jim loses track of the thought almost immediately, because Bones opens his mouth against his sac as the fingers inside Jim press upward towards the thumb pressing from the outside and the flare of pleasure is so strong it whites out the feeling of Jim’s toes starting to cramp and the too-far stretch of his inner thighs and he only knows he’s coming by the way his throat aches around the scream.

It takes several minutes of panting with an arm thrown over his eyes for Jim to come back to himself. He lets Bones rub feeling back into his thighs and bend his toes back until they crack while the occasional post-orgasmic tremor runs through him.

“Fuck,” he murmurs as Bones kisses his way up his chest.

“Mmmm,” Bones growls close to his ear, knees settling heavily on either side of him. Jim can feel Bones’ erection slide along his stomach, hot, slick, and getting slicker with the semen spattered between them. It makes him twitch weakly and groan because no, way too soon.

But Bones just laughs, low and rumbling, drawing a line up the sensitive inside of Jim’s bicep with the tip of his nose. Jim moves his arm and blinks up at Bones, taking in his flushed cheeks and the hair falling into his eyes. He tries to coordinate his mouth into saying something, but all that comes out is another groan. Bones looks smug.

“You know, I’m startin’ to think The Jim Kirk Experience is greatly exaggerated.”

“Ouch,” is all Jim manages, arranging his face into something approximating wounded. Most people haven’t been able to take him apart as systematically and completely as Bones with just their fucking _hands_. Fuck.

“S’pose I could put all my hard work to good use, fuck you while you’re nice and open for me.” Jim feels himself start to flush again, closing his eyes and listening intently. “But I like the idea of fucking myself on you without you getting all impatient on me. You’ve got a habit of getting handsy.”

“You like me handsy.” He reaches up to prove his point, tugging Bones down with a hand at the back of his neck. Bones resists for a breath, but allows himself to be pulled into a kiss, strong fingers wrapping around Jim’s other wrist and pinning it to the bed as their mouths move against each other. He tastes like sweat and desire.

“I like you a lot of things some of the time,” Bones says after biting Jim’s lower lip.

“And I like the idea of watching you ride me,” Jim says simply. “I’ll even keep my hands to myself.”

“Oh, _now_ you’ve got it in you.” Bones’ tone is mocking, but the way he grinds his dick into Jim’s pelvis is telling.

Jim grins, the refractory period that helped earn him his well-deserved-thank-you-very-much reputation winding down. “You know me, I’m flexible.” He’s actually sore, but not _that_ sore. Pain’s a reminder, sometimes better than memory. “C’mon, Bones, show me what you got.”

Turns out, Bones has got quite a lot. Before Jim can really process what’s happening, Bones is pushing fingers inside himself with the hand that’s still slick from opening up _Jim_ —which is kind of amazingly filthy—biting his lip and flushing darker as he works. It’s mesmerizing and fucking sexy and Jim maybe gets why Bones likes torturing him so much now. Because if all it takes for Bones to make those little sounds is a few well-placed fingers, Jim can definitely manage that. Happily. Repeatedly.

“Yeah,” Jim can’t stop himself from saying, interlacing his fingers behind his head, “stretch yourself for me. Just like that.”

The corners of Bones’ mouth turn down and he grunts, hips moving in small, jerky thrusts. His dick is red and shiny, bobbing as his thighs twitch, making Jim’s mouth water.

“God, you look incredible. Ready whenever you are.”

That makes Bones really frown, opening his eyes to glare at Jim. But he pulls his fingers out and reaches blindly behind himself for the lube. Jim plants his feet on the mattress, bracing for the cool, slippery touch as Bones slicks him up, quick and perfunctory.

“It’s not a scope, Bones, you can give it a little loving.”

“Shoulda mentioned the fact that you’re mouthy, too,” Bones grumbles, spreading his knees out further on the bed and leaning back to position himself over Jim’s dick. Jim has to squeeze his eyes shut as Bones lowers himself down, moving his hips in little circles to seat Jim deeper. “Hot damn,” Bones sighs, tension leaching out of him.

Jim swallows a little laugh, adjusting to the tight, slick heat of Bones around him. And then Bones starts moving. At first it’s just rocking, slow movements as he gets used to Jim inside him. Jim hasn’t fucked him in a while, mostly because Bones hasn’t asked, not for lack of wanting. Jim’s easygoing enough for the both of them and will happily take what he’s given. But the expression on Bones’ face as he starts working himself up and down—head tilted back to expose the long line of his neck, mouth open, the tense lines of his face relaxed—makes Jim think twice about not pushing things.

Bones is infinitely more patient than Jim, working himself up to a brutal rhythm in tiny increments, driving Jim nearly insane and making him grateful for his hard-earned orgasm earlier. Jim’s hands are sweaty where they’re latched onto each other, desperate to reach out and touch. Jim knows exactly how Bones’ skin feels flushed and sweaty, but he loves the feeling of muscle working towards release.

“Fuck, Bones,” Jim gasps. Bones doesn’t even acknowledge him, his face screwed up in concentration, his hands braced on Jim’s knees, using them for leverage as he moves. The long lines of his torso—wide shoulders to narrow waist to the vee of his iliac crest—draw Jim’s eyes downward to Bones’ perfect dick, hard and bouncing and tragically neglected. “God, can I—?”

Bones _snarls_. “Not before I’m done with you.” He tilts his hips, grunting at the improved angle.

“Shit, no, I mean. Can I . . . give you a hand?”

Smiling, Bones shakes sweat out of his eyes and curls a hand around his erection. “Nope. You just sit pretty. I’m busy.”

Jim manages to stifle his whimper and focuses on Bones’ hand working himself over, deliberate and practiced. Bones strokes himself slower than his bouncing rhythm, flicking his thumb over the head of his dick at the end of every upstroke. He flutters around Jim, clenching and unclenching sporadically, signaling that he’s on the edge.

Jim tries to thrust up, help him along, but Bones just stops and sits heavily, grinding his prostate against Jim’s dick over and over, his hand never stopping. It shocks Jim into begging, suddenly so close to a second orgasm he can taste it in the humid air.

“Fuck, Bones, _please_.”

“Wait your goddamn— _ahn_!” Bones grunts as he starts to come, bucking and squeezing around Jim as semen splashes and dribbles over his knuckles to land on Jim’s chest. Jim has to touch him, moving so quickly his hands slap loudly against Bones’ thighs on contact before he runs them up and down Bones’ flanks as Bones shudders through the last of his orgasm. Bones collapses forward, bracing his hands on Jim’s chest, breathing heavily while Jim twitches once, twice inside him, trying to keep the strokes up and down Bones’ sides soothing rather than insistent.

“What’re you waiting for, kid, a written invitation?”

“Verbal works,” Jim says, bracing his hands on Bones’ hips and thrusting upwards. They both moan, Bones a little more strained, but he leans down, slipping his dry hand into Jim’s hair. Jim kisses him greedily, sliding their tongues together as he thrusts as hard as he can manage from this angle. Between Bones’ clever mouth and his welcoming body, he doesn’t last much longer, going taut and coming with a gasp. Bones rides him through it, collapsing to the side only after Jim relaxes in a boneless sprawl.

Between the two of them, there’s not much room in Bones’ double bed, but they manage to settle with minimal contact as their skin cools. Jim feels almost weightless, exhausted and limp.

“Bones?”

“Think so.” It’s sleepy and muffled and close to his ear.

“Thanks.”

“Hnf.” Jim chooses to read it as a “you’re welcome.”


	4. Chapter 4

4.

Jim adjusts the weight of his pack on his shoulder, blinking in the San Francisco sunlight. He turns his head, calling over his shoulder, “So where to, Bones? There’s at least six shuttles that leave on the hour; that gives us a good twenty minutes or so to choose.” 

“You can do whatever you want, kid. I’m going home.”

Jim falls into stride next to Bones, taking a few seconds to appreciate his purposeful strut and how well civvies hang off his broad shoulders. “Soooo, Georgia? I think shuttles for the East Coast leave on the quarter hour. I mean, I was thinking somewhere off-world, but I’ve never been to Georgia. You could show me—”

“Not Georgia. My apartment. Here.” Bones shoulders his way through sidewalk traffic effortlessly, the two of them getting more than a few sidelong glances as they make their way off campus.

“Come on, Bones. You have two weeks to do anything you want. Don’t tell me you want to waste it here.”

Bones stops walking, sighing as he turns to face Jim. “Jim, I just spent three months in space going god-knows-where doing god-knows-what. I have two weeks to get all the strange out of my system before we go back up there and do it all again. Now I’m going to do that by spending the next two weeks sleeping in a bed _I_ bought eating food _I_ made in an apartment _I_ picked out. If that doesn’t suit you, I hear Risa is very nice this time of year.” Finished, Bones crosses his arms over his chest, waiting for Jim to respond.

“I was actually thinking about checking out Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet.”

Rolling his eyes, Bones walks away, yelling, “So long, Jim. See you in two weeks.”

Stunned, Jim stands rooted to the spot for a few moments, watching Bones disappear into the crowd. Then he shrugs, readjusting his pack, and heads towards the shuttle station.

He finds himself staring at the schedule for a good ten minutes after the first round of shuttles leave, which he notices only because he’s rudely jostled several times as people try to pass him. Usually, when presented with an array of choices, Jim has never had a problem taking quick, decisive action. Yet here he is, with practically the entire known universe laid out before him, and he can’t even decide which star station to use as a jumping-off point.

“Fuck,” Jim swears after another fifteen minutes of staring and goes to find Bones.

***

The building looks antique at street level, all stone and framed windows, but shoots up into the sky as a pillar of glass and steel. The entrance is flanked by a café-bakery and a flower shop, which Jim finds surprisingly charming.

Bones answers his buzzer with a gruff “Yeah?”

“Candygram.”

He imagines Bones pinching the bridge of his nose. “Jim.”

“Got it in one. Gonna let me up?”

“Don’t you have a shuttle to be on?”

“Not unless you’ve got a nickname I don’t know about.” Jim crosses his arms and leans against the wall next to the comm unit. Bones sighs noisily. “Come on,” Jim wheedles, “I brought you something.”

“What.”

Jim leans close to the speaker. “Well, it’s big, vaguely cylindrical, and it’s a great way to shut you up.”

“You better be talking about a bottle of booze, Jim.”

He wasn’t. The buzzer sounds and Jim lets himself into the building, whistling. He smiles at an elderly woman carrying a small, furry dog as he enters the lobby, holding the door open for her as she leaves. She looks at him wide-eyed for a moment, likely in recognition, but smiles back as she passes him, thanking him quietly.

As he walks down the hallway of Bones’ floor reading door numbers, he thinks how strange it is that he never got a chance to see the place before their assignment started. After the Nero shitshow, Jim had slept in the dorms when he had slept at all. Bones had had more time on his hands, not being burdened with meetings and press conferences and the task of manning and supplying the _Enterprise_ , so Jim was only vaguely aware of him looking for an apartment. “I’m gonna be living and working in the same tin can for months at a time, Jim. I need somewhere to call my own. I can’t eat, breathe, and sleep Starfleet the way some of these kids can,” he had said during one of their few stolen moments together.

Things happened so quickly after Bones moved in that he never had the chance to stop by. He’s fairly sure Bones barely saw the place either. _It’s nice_ , he thinks, knocking ( _knocking_ , no chime in sight) on Bones’ door.

“It’s open,” Bones calls from somewhere inside the apartment.

Jim lets himself in, dropping his pack next to the door. He takes a moment to look around, walking in and down the few steps to the living area where Bones is stretched out on the couch, looking relaxed. The space is moderately sized but open and sparsely decorated. Most of Bones’ small, sentimental things are on the ship, anyway. It’s not exactly homey, but it’s not sterile.

“Nice place you’ve got, Bones. Cafés and flower shops, little old ladies and honest-to-god doors. It’s like something out of a holo.”

“It’s quiet,” Bones grumbles.

Jim crosses to the wall of windows, looking out over the city. Silvery glimpses of ocean peek out between the buildings. “You going to offer me one of those?” he asks, looking deliberately at the glass in Bones’ hand.

“I offer drinks to invited guests. The uninvited ones get their own.”

Chuckling, Jim walks over to the kitchen, jogging up the three steps into it. The bottle of whiskey is sitting out on the counter, but the cabinets are glass faced, so it’s easy enough to find the tumblers. Jim snags one, whistling when he picks up the bottle. “So this is where you keep the really good stuff.”

“And it was safe, too, until now.”

Jim pours a generous two fingers, takes a sip, moans appreciatively if not a little sexually, then pours another finger.

“How many of those have you had?” Jim asks as he moves towards the couch, kicking his boots off as he goes.

“I’m on leave,” Bones says, like it’s an answer. He lifts up his feet obligingly so Jim can sit down and then deposits them in Jim’s lap.

Fingering the knob of one of Bones’ ankles, Jim takes a leisurely sip of whiskey, settling into the couch cushions happily as warmth spreads down his neck and through his chest. He takes a deep breath that feels like the first in months. How could he have possibly thought running around space for two weeks could be better than this?

Especially when Bones puts an arm behind his head, his shirt riding up to reveal the enticing trail of hair below his navel, his other arm dangling off the couch, swirling the liquid in his glass with the lazy rotation of his wrist.

Jim swallows on nothing, suddenly very aware of Bones’ eyes on him in a way he hasn’t since before they were . . . what they are. He takes another swallow of whiskey, holding it in his mouth until he can barely stand the burn.

“So what brings you here, Jim?”

Trust Bones to slice right to the heart of the matter, to ask the one question he can’t confidently answer. On the bridge it makes him want to scream, but it forces him to think. Right now, Jim doesn’t want to think. So he slides the easy smirk onto his face, the one that’s familiar as breathing, and turns on the Jim Kirk charm. “I told you, I brought you something. Call it a housewarming gift.”

Bones rolls his eyes. “I know you were talking about your dick, dumbass. You can get laid anywhere.”

Jim frowns, suddenly very interested in the whiskey in his glass. “Maybe I don’t want to get laid just anywhere.” He says it to be contrary, but as the words come out the truth of it sinks in. Really sinks in. He turns to look Bones in the eye, emboldened by the warmth and looseness he hasn’t felt since before Nero and Vulcan and the _Narada_. Bones’ eyebrow is raised, but questioningly rather than mockingly. “Maybe everything I want is right here.”

Bones pushes himself up, his eyes narrowed and his lips parted. “Jim—” But Jim doesn’t let him get any further, finishing his drink in one swallow and placing the glass on the floor as he moves towards Bones, pushing him back with a hand on his chest and his mouth on Bones’. This is easy. This is familiar.

The sound Bones makes starts as words but devolves into a moan as Jim licks into his mouth and plants a knee between his legs. Hands sink into Jim’s hair, tilting his head to just the right angle, sending Jim’s body into an undulating wave that starts with kissing Bones deeper and ends with pressing their groins together.

“Jim—mnng,” Bones tries again, wrenching his mouth away, but Jim uses the opportunity to kiss his way down Bones’ throat, scraping his teeth against faint stubble. Bones lets out a heavy breath as Jim sucks the fluttering skin over his pulse, managing to wrap his legs loosely around Jim’s thighs and tilt his hips.

“So am I getting a tour of the bedroom or what?” Jim murmurs against Bones’ Adam’s apple. If he’s learned anything, it’s that a horny Bones is a suggestible Bones, and he desperately wants to spread Bones out on a bed and sink into him like a rock into the dark, engulfing waters of the sea.

“Yeah.” Bones swallows. “Yeah,” he says again, kissing Jim firmly and sitting up, swinging his legs over the edge of the couch to stand. Jim takes the hand Bones extends to help him up, then trails him into the bedroom.

Jim looks around briefly, taking in the fact that the room is relatively small, the bed the obvious centerpiece, with the same wall of windows as the living area minus the balcony access. His attention returns to Bones just in time to watch him shuck his pants and sit on the edge of the bed, his black boxer briefs clinging in all the best ways as he reaches for Jim.

Stepping into the inviting space between Bones’ legs, Jim runs his hands over naked shoulders and up Bones’ neck, cradling his jaw. He leans down for a brief, exploratory kiss, but Bones tugs at the collar and sleeves of his jacket, trying to get it off. Not one to argue with getting naked, he strips to the waist and tilts his pelvis towards Bones, earning a raised eyebrow.

“Forget how pants work?” But Bones says it without bite, even as he pulls Jim in by the hips and undoes his fly.

“I just like watching you do it.” There is nothing in this universe like the look that Bones gives his Starfleet-issue-briefs-clad dick. If he isn’t hard already, that look never fails to get him there. That hungry look has been, is, and always shall be the undoing of James T. Kirk, Captain, forever and ever, amen. And he isn’t disappointed as Bones tugs his pants down over his ass, letting them drop so he can step out of them and kick them away.

Bones licks his lips, probably unconsciously, and skims his hands up the outside of Jim’s thighs to rest just below his ass. “Now where else am I gonna get that?” Jim murmurs, running a hand through Bones’ hair, palming the curve of his skull.

“Anything with limbs can take off a pair of pants these days, kid.” Bones’ hands move higher, fiddling with the waistband of his briefs.

Jim plants a knee next to Bones’ hip on the bed, grabbing a handful of hair and tilting Bones’ head back. “See?” he says against Bones’ mouth, “Who else is going to keep my ego in check?” Bones grunts into the kiss, making Jim smile as he bites Bones’ plush bottom lip.

He tips Bones backwards as they kiss, lifting his other knee up onto the bed and resting his open hand against the hollow between Bones’ ribs as Bones lies back. Jim revels in the lazy slide of Bones’ hands up his sides, over his chest, into his hair, down his back, only to start the same journey over again. There’s no fear that the comm will whistle, duty calling one of them away; no persistent hum reminding them that there’s always work to be done. He buries his face in the slope of Bones’ shoulder and inhales, gasping when Bones grazes a nipple.

Jim bites when Bones does it again, sinking his teeth into the muscle slowly and deliberately. Bones likes teeth but not pain, Jim likes marking him but not hurting him. It works out. That is, until Bones twists Jim’s nipple a little viciously—a clear signal that  either he’s bored or Jim is biting down a little too hard—which makes Jim buck and let out a high-pitched noise.

He feels Bones grin against his jaw just before Bones twists again, and even though Jim is sort of bracing for it, the zing of sensation makes him full-out whine and arch his back. Bones might not like pain, but Jim does. A fingernail scrapes across one of his nipples, and Jim has to press his forehead to the bed. “Shit, Bones, I’m trying to fuck you here.”

Bones circles the same nipple with his finger. “So fuck me, Jim.”

Jim laughs because he loves being sassed in bed almost as much as he loves a challenge. He sits up to grab Bones’ hips and shove him further up onto the bed, grabbing fistfuls of underwear and dragging them off with a flourish. He leans down to lick a friendly stripe up the underside of Bones’ dick and climbs off the bed, rolling the salty taste of skin and arousal around his mouth as he glances around for likely lube stashes. There’s some in his pack (“Jesus, kid, are you ever _not_ prepared to fuck somebody at the drop of a hat?”), but that’s in the other room and Bones is here.

“Drawer,” Bones says, lazily stroking himself as Jim shoves off his own briefs, looking for said drawer. Well, half heartedly looking, because he’s torn between watching Bones touch himself and finding the lube so he can actively participate.

The drawer of the bedside table is practically empty but for a few PADDs and the tube of lube. Jim takes the lube, squeezing some into his hand to warm it as he returns to the bed. He watches raptly as Bones lifts his knees and plants his feet on the bed, spreading his long, muscular thighs.

“God, Bones, look at you.” Jim runs an appreciative unlubed hand up the inside of Bones’ thigh, hair tickling his palm. Bones grunts when Jim slips his other hand under Bones’ moving one, helping to give his dick a few slick, leisurely pulls. Tipping his head back, Bones moans, pushing into Jim’s grip.

“You know,” Jim says conversationally, removing his hand from Bones’ dick and moving it downwards to press against his perineum, teasing lower, “in this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets.”

“So?” Bones growls, pushing against Jim’s light touch.

“And in all of the universe, three million galaxies like this,” Jim continues, pressing lower and harder, the tip of his finger sliding into Bones’ willing body.

“Are we having sex or is this an astronomy lesson?”

Jim presses his finger in further, leisurely stretching Bones, completely unconcerned by Bones’ glare. “And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us.”

Bones sighs heavily, but he keeps nudging his hips towards Jim’s hand. “You’ve lost me, kid, but you’re a very special snowflake if that’s what you’re angling for.”

Leaning down, Jim plants his elbow next to Bones’ head and looks directly into his big hazel eyes. “My point,” he says, adding another finger and riding out Bones’ corresponding writhe as he waits for him to open his eyes again, “is that I could go anywhere I wanted and I’d never find another you.” Jim curls his fingers upwards and Bones gasps, hips bucking. “Just in case you were still wondering why I’m here,” he whispers.

Bones groans, reaching up to cup Jim’s face with one hand. “In the future, Jim,” he pauses to gasp as Jim adds a third finger, moving them more quickly, “in the future, if you’re gonna ramble on during sex—oh, mercy, that’s good. _Just_ there, yeah.”

Jim grins despite himself, aiming more directly for Bones’ prostate. “What was that, Bones? I didn’t quite catch it.”

Forcing his eyes open, Bones grits around clenched teeth, “If you’re going to ramble on during sex—shit, _ah_ , you fucker—at least tell me something I don’t know.”

“Asshole,” Jim laughs, withdrawing his fingers and wiping the excess lube on his very neglected erection. “I was trying to be profound and romantic.” Bones pulls his knees towards his chest in a ridiculous display of flexibility so distracting that Jim drizzles more lube on the sheets than he does his dick. The eyebrow that Bones raises at Jim’s quiet curse can only be interpreted as “Jim, you better not have gotten lube on my brand new sheets, I swear to god.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Bones says out loud instead, watching Jim palm more lube onto his dick and line himself up. “Be profound and romantic _after_ you fuck me.”

Jim presses forward as slowly as he can, biting his lip and enjoying the tight slide as Bones allows him in centimeter by glorious centimeter. Halfway in, he pauses, letting Bones catch his breath as he wipes the last of the lube on Bones’ stomach before leaning forward and planting his hands on the bed, Bones’ knees resting in the crooks of Jim’s elbows.

Bones’ face is flushed pink, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead and shining in the hollow of his throat. Jim pushes forward another few centimeters and Bones’ tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip, his hands wrapping firmly around Jim’s wrists. Jim shifts further up the bed, forcing Bones to fold nearly in half, and lets his hips continue their inexorable slide forward. Bottoming out, Jim exhales heavily, reveling in the unparalleled feeling of being completely welcomed into someone. And he’s extremely partial to being welcomed into Bones.

“You gonna move any time soon?”

Jim grins, licking a crease by the corner of Bones’ mouth, glad that the warmth enveloping his dick overrides the feeling of the bones in his wrists grinding as they’re squeezed together. “I like it here, I think I’m going to stay,” he breathes, nudging just enough to make Bones shudder but not provide any friction.

“Jim, you fucking—”

“Shh, not yet. I’m savoring.” He loves Bones beneath him, but the effort of not moving is making sweat prickle down his spine and fine tremors run up his thighs. Jim buries his face in Bones’ neck, rocking a bit to keep his dick from feeling like it’s going to explode. Bones’ erection is a hot, sticky mess pressed between their stomachs, and Jim can just see the flushed tip when he glances between their bodies. “I’m on leave, remember? I’ve got nowhere to be but here.”

Bones glowers impressively, incredibly dark eyes and all. “If you want to have sex again in the next two weeks, so help me—” And that’s when Jim cries out because hands that have no right being that dexterous in the middle of sex are twisting and pulling his nipples just the right amount to make him buck his hips. And even though Jim thrusts hard enough to jerk Bones a good few inches up the bed, Bones hangs on, twisting that much harder to ensure that Jim keeps thrusting, as though his nipples are the throttle and his hips are the engine and Bones is going to get him up to fourth gear if it kills both of them.

Jim is very much okay with that.

Especially when, even after he manages to get a hand between their shifting bodies (after he gets Bones’ knees over his shoulders, which is the absolute best even if Bones will deny it and claim it fucks with his back even though half the time Bones is the one slinging them up there) and make Bones come messily and loudly, Bones doesn’t even let go in the throes of orgasm, instead giving Jim’s nipples a final hard tweak that makes stars and whirling galaxies flash behind his eyes in a startling display.

And when Jim practically chokes, “Fuck, I fucking love you, Bones,” as he pulses what feel like important parts of his brain into Bones’ lax body, he means it.

Just as much as he does after he pulls out and collapses next to Bones, kissing him until he feels dizzy, murmuring “I fucking love you so fucking much” between kisses until Bones laughs helplessly.

“Would it kill you to say it like a normal person?” Bones asks, but he’s grinning against Jim’s mouth as he does.

“Fuck normal.” Jim flops onto his back. He stretches his arms over his head until his shoulders pop. His abused nipples throb dully. “And, man, fucking surgeons,” he says absently.

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” Bones answers, flawlessly deadpan.

Jim laughs. “Why do you think I love it so much? Seriously, do they teach ‘How to Apply Surgical Dexterity to Sex’ second or third year of medical school? Do you teach it? Can I audit it?”

Bones rolls his eyes. “Lord, help me.”

Chuckling, Jim settles more comfortably on the bed, a yawn making his jaw creak. A cocktail of booze, sex, and lack of responsibilities is apparently quite the sedative. He’s dimly aware of Bones leaving the bed, and a sense of unease settles over him. But there’s water running somewhere nearby, and he relaxes again.

Bones returns a few minutes later to wipe him down with a warm cloth, mumbling, “I can’t believe I’m christening my towels on your junk,” which makes Jim laugh sleepily into the pillow he managed to drag towards his face. Bones clearly doesn’t mind that much because he drops the towel on the floor and climbs into bed.

They curl up together, late afternoon sunlight washing over them.

“I meant it,” Jim says after a while. “It wasn’t just sex hormones or whatever.”

Bones cracks an eye open. “Since when do you say things you don’t mean, kid?”

He thinks about it. Bones says what he means, but Jim means what he says. There’s a subtle difference there. About seventy-five percent of Bones’ thoughts end up tumbling out of his mouth with utter conviction, even if he ends up changing his mind a few minutes later. Jim’s a bit more cautious than that, trying to make sure that everything he says has a purpose. He realized very quickly at the Academy that almost anything could come back to bite him in the ass, especially if he wanted to become a captain. But there have been exceptions. “Since that time I had to emotionally compromise Spock?” Bones tenses up. That whole situation is somewhat of a sore subject between them.

“That was different. That was to keep a planet from being turned into a black hole. Business.”

Jim snorts. “Business.” He had said what needed to be said to achieve the desired outcome, but cruelty doesn’t sit well with him.

“Business,” Bones agrees.

Jim leers, trying to lighten the mood. “I just gave _you_ the business.”

Bones sighs his most put-upon sigh, but wraps his arms more firmly around him and pulls him closer. “You’re a fucking idiot, Jim Kirk, but, god help me, I love you.”

“Yeah you do,” Jim says, earning himself a weak smack upside the head. He falls asleep smiling into Bones’ shoulder.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

“Don’t think I won’t sedate you, Jim. Stop moving.”

Jim grits his teeth against the uncomfortable not-quite-tickling, not-quite-prickling sensation of the nano-gloves beginning to work as Bones adjusts the settings.

“It feels weird,” Jim whines.

“Good. That means you don’t have nerve damage. Maybe next time you’ll think twice before reaching into a _pool of acid_.”

Suppressing the urge to shift on the biobed, Jim focuses on flexing his toes under the blanket. “The locals said it was safe. How was I supposed to know that their water is slightly corrosive?” It took five minutes for Jim’s skin to even start burning. Bones knocked him out before the pain became unbearable, but those few minutes of panic as the pain ramped up were pretty unpleasant. The thought of accidentally drinking their water instead of just rinsing his hands makes bile rise in his throat.

Bones tweaks something and the prickling stops, giving way to more of a tingling sensation. “It’s not like anyone with a tricorder was standing right there or anything.”

“I was trying to be polite,” Jim says primly.

“Well, when your hands are fixed you can send a thank-you note.” Bones taps a few more commands into the PADD controlling the gloves and stands up. “Those are going to be on for at least two days. No arguments. If you want full dexterity, we’ll have to go slow.”

Jim lifts the gloves up by his face, looking at them mournfully. “Two days? I can’t do anything with these on.”

“You’ve grasped their purpose, well done.”

“I’ll have to pee sitting down.”

Bones rolls his eyes. “Half the crew does it every day. You’ll manage.”

“Can’t you put me out or something? I’ll go nuts.”

“Surprisingly, court martial for medical malpractice sounds less appealing than hearing you bitch for two days. So, no. Suck it up, kid.”

Jim flops back onto the biobed, blowing a breath at the ceiling. “At least let me spend it in my quarters?” Bones looks at him askance, which means he’s teetering on the edge of compliance. “Please?” Big guns successfully deployed.

“Maybe,” is all Bones says, but Jim grins.

He isn’t grinning a few hours later after a tiny little incident of very manly passing out—not fainting, no, sir—when they try to move him out of sickbay makes Bones want to keep him overnight for observation.

“Bones, I’m fine. Look how fine I am. I’m awake and everything. And I can do the opposite of that in my quarters just as well as I can here.”

Frowning alternately at the biobed readings and the PADD for the gloves, Bones is in full doctor mode. “No more risks, Jim. Running both gloves at once is clearly a strain on your system. I’m setting the gloves to alternate every couple hours and keeping you here to see how that goes. You survive the night, then we’ll talk.”

“You’re doubling my time in these things? Bones, I can’t. I’ll _die_.” Jim pouts to the extent of his ability, hoping that Bones’ doctorly sense of mercy will make him see reason.

“We’ve been through this before. The only other option is synth-grafts, and if it were any other part of your body or you were any other patient I’d give it a shot. But because it’s your hands, which I’m guessing you want full sensation and mobility of, and because it’s _you_ , who has rejected almost every single foreign body I’ve ever introduced into your system in the interest of saving your life, this is our only option. Now, unless you want me to lop them off and grow you some new ones entirely, quit being such a goddamned baby.” With that, Bones turns on his heel and walks to his office, leaving Jim pouting at nothing.

When Nurse Chapel shows up to feed him his dinner, Jim is decidedly not amused. “Is that applesauce?”

Chapel nods, waiting with the full spoon for Jim to open his mouth. “Dr. McCoy said it would be best if you had things that were easy on your system for the time being. Applesauce, bananas, soup, and toast, tonight.”

“Is that all he said?”

“He might have said something to the effect of ‘Act like a baby, eat like a baby.’”

“Do me a favor and tell him I hate him, would you?”

“As soon as you’re finished eating, Captain,” she says smoothly, holding the spoon just in front of Jim’s mouth and looking at him in that cool, expectant, eerily Spock-like way she has.

“And tell him I hate applesau—mmph.”

Chapel is too professional to look smug, but her “Yes, sir” definitely sounds amused.

***

Two days later, Jim finds himself—as he predicted—slowly going insane in his quarters. He can’t work because he can’t sign anything, since voiceprints apparently don’t count, and his recreational activities are limited to what he can command the computer to do. He’s spent half a day trying to poke bluntly at a PADD balanced awkwardly on his lap, but the gloves aren’t conductive enough for the screens to register the touch, and any attempts to use a stylus with either his mouth or his feet was so frustrating that he gave up. Jerking off isn’t an option (humping the bed was ultimately an unsatisfying endeavor that just ended up making him feel like he was twelve again), so he’s frustrated, bored, _and_ horny.

It doesn’t help that underneath it all is the obnoxious itchingpricklingtingling sensation of the gloves doing their job. What’s worse is that just when Jim gets used to the sensation and it floats to the back of his mind, the gloves switch hands and he has to get used to the sensation all over again. It’s maddening. Which he lets Bones know frequently and loudly whenever he stops by.

“Brig for a month,” he yells this time when Bones comes by after his shift. He’s been trying for several hours to perfect antique-book page turning with his feet. So far he’s only read about fifty pages because the book keeps closing when he leans forward so he can actually see the words.

“Non-active-duty captains can’t hand out brig sentences,” Bones says simply as he sits down next to Jim on the couch, opening the medkit he brought and pulling out a tricorder. “And you’re going to break the spine.”

Jim struggles to grasp just one page between his big toe and second toe so he can turn it. The tricorder whirrs quietly as Bones waves it over him. His foot slides slightly as he struggles to separate the pages and the book falls closed. He curses colorfully, throwing himself backwards against the back of the couch.

Bones switches the tricorder for the PADD hooked to the nano-gloves, ignoring Jim’s outburst. He taps at it for a few moments, and Jim’s fingers ache to be able to do the same. Jim’s PADDs are shoved out of sight so he doesn’t accidentally or purposefully throw any of them against the wall out of sheer frustration.

“Dizziness?” Bones asks, as always.

“No.”

“Loss of sensation?”

“Nope.”

“Change in sensation?”

“Less burny and more pins and needles.”

“Level of pain, if any? Zero to ten.”

“Somewhere between .25 and .5, I guess.” Jim turns the gloves over, flexing the muscles in his hands experimentally. He can feel them respond, they’re just immobile. The tingling increases somewhat in the places he’s trying to move on his right hand.

Bones makes a few notations in what must be Jim’s file, muttering, “So no change, then. Good.” Then a few more taps with the stylus and he puts the PADD back in the kit. “Did you eat?”

“You forgot to put food in my bowl when you left, so no,” Jim says sarcastically.

Rolling his eyes, Bones moves towards the replicator and enters a few commands. “At least you didn’t mess the carpet this time.”

“It was one little bottle of Saurian brandy.”

Bones walks to the table with two plates, placing one to the side and cutting the contents of the other methodically. “Which, had you managed to actually ingest any, would have caused far more trouble than just making this place smell like an Argelian pleasure house for a day.”

Sitting down at the table, Jim is surprised to find that Bones replicated pot roast and mashed potatoes, a particular favorite despite the side salad. “I’m going to have to rethink the organization of my shelves. Booze next to the books is great alphabetically, but apparently not practically.”

“I’m sure Spock would be happy to offer some suggestions,” Bones says, spearing a chunk of meat and swiping it through the potatoes. “Hell, he’ll probably do it for you.”

Jim places his hands on the table, leaning forward slightly. Being fed is still awkward and thrusts his essential helplessness to the forefront in a way that he hates, but he minds it far less when it’s Bones doing the feeding. Part of it is the way that Bones just holds the fork still and allows Jim to come to him, tugging the fork back after Jim gets his mouth around it and using it to feed himself from his own plate as though they do this every night.

“Speaking of,” Jim says around his mouthful. “Where’s my daily report?”

Bones frowns, cherry tomato halfway to his mouth, but slides a PADD over from the other end of the table and pulls up Spock’s audio report. They continue eating, Bones alternating bites between them, as Spock lists statistics and personnel and supply notes, finishing with news from Starfleet Command.

Without being asked, Bones sets up audio recording for Jim’s notes, eating and interjecting periodically as Jim talks, trying to organize his thoughts as coherently as possible. When he’s done, Bones ends the recording and holds a bite up for him to take. It’s salad, and Jim makes a face as he leans in, but he opens his mouth anyway.

“How’s sickbay?” he asks after a few more bites.

Bones shrugs. “Same ship, different day.”

Jim laughs and the corner of Bones’ mouth tilts up. “Seriously. I’ll eat, you talk.”

Grumbling half heartedly, Bones loads another forkful and begins to tell Jim about the day’s patients and annoyances. He gesticulates with the fork occasionally as he talks, which frustrates Jim when he actually wants what’s on it, but then Bones pauses, staring at Jim like he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, before he remembers to hold it steady.

After ten minutes or so of complaining about the current bug making its slow, determined way around the crew, Jim notices himself getting hard. Part of it, he knows, is simple sexual frustration. He’s been popping erections like a teenager over the past few days with little rhyme or reason. With so little to distract him, it was inevitable, really.

But part of him knows, even as he leans forward to close his mouth around another bite of food, that the casual intimacy of Bones feeding him, taking care of him, plays no small part. Bones holds the fork like he would any other tool, but that also means that it suddenly becomes an object of infinite care, a utensil in Bones’ vast arsenal of healing.

Although, Bones is simply an attractive son of a bitch, so who knows.

“You finished?” Bones asks, gesturing at the plates.

Jim nods and leans back in his chair, sprawling a little as Bones clears the table. A hand curls itself around the back of his neck and Jim closes his eyes briefly, leaning into it. Without the use of his hands, the only skin-to-skin contact he has is from Bones and, quite frankly, he’s touch-starved.

Bones’ thumb traces his hairline and he shivers. “What can I do for you?” Bones asks.

Jim tips his head back to look at Bones, raising his eyebrows and grinning. “How about some dessert?”

Bones raises an eyebrow of his own. “Are you kidding me? You’re in no state for sex.”

“Well, my dick seems to disagree.” Jim looks down pointedly, where the front of his shorts is distinctly tenting.

Bones rubs his eyes and moves to sit back down. “Jim, the last thing I want to do is fuck with your vitals right now. The hormone shift alone could throw the nanobots off completely.”

“So turn them off for five minutes. Honestly? After two days with practically nothing to occupy me but my dirty, dirty thoughts, I’m not going to be performing any stunning feats of endurance.” He’s pretty sure he’s pictured every member of the alpha bridge crew with every other member of the alpha bridge crew at this point. In at least three different positions.

“You know I’m not going to do that, Jim. Blue balls never killed anybody.”

“Boooones. Please?”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Bones shakes his head. “No, Jim. End of story.”

Jim sighs dramatically. Usually, this is where he would either dial up the seduction or take matters into his own hands, be it in the bathroom or right where he’s sitting. Circumstances being what they are, neither option is exactly viable.

“C’mon, I’ll read you one of those engineering journals.” Bones must feel really bad to voluntarily subject himself to “ship voodoo.” It’s enough of an apology that Jim doesn’t press the issue, even though his dick is quite insistent.

They settle on the couch, Jim pressing himself against as much of Bones as he can, which means he ends up mostly on top of Bones, back to chest, with Bones’ free hand tucked up under his shirt pressing against his heartbeat. It doesn’t exactly help the whole hard-on situation, but he becomes distracted enough by some of the articles that he forgets about it.

“Oh, Christ, here we go,” Bones grumbles after finishing an article on theoretical fuel conversion for starship shuttles that Jim found unrealistic at best and boring at worst.

“What?”

“‘Transwarp beaming: no longer the stuff of myth and derision,’ by Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineer, _USS Enterprise_.”

Jim laughs despite himself. “Sounds like he’s still pissed about Delta Vega.” He beams a little on the inside, though. Scotty presented his equation to Starfleet before they had embarked on their first mission, and while they were initially skeptical, it seems they’ve come around. After six months of comms and questioning that left Scotty testy but made him work all the harder while the ‘Fleet engineers tested his theory, Jim’s ace engineer finally gets to take credit.

“No excuse for bad writin’,” Bones mumbles.

“When was the last time you wrote an article?”

“I wrote two last month.”

Jim turns his head to look at him. “When? You didn’t say anything.”

Bones pats Jim’s chest placatingly and turns back to the journal, “Don’t you worry your pretty head. They practically write themselves out here.”

“Oh my god, are they about me?”

Bones kisses his forehead. “I’m sure you’re not the only person born on a shuttle who’s developed several unusual allergies and medical quirks,” he says casually before launching into the article.

A few sections in, Jim forgets his indignation. It’s not the best-put-together article, but the theory itself is strong enough and presented well enough that its flaws can be forgiven. It will certainly keep the quantum physics community occupied for years to come. Jim makes a mental note to encourage Scotty to find a second-in-command he trusts enough to run engineering while he’s presenting at the inevitable conferences. He starts listing possible candidates in his head.

Meanwhile, having finished reading, Bones snuffles in Jim’s hair, an unusual but sweet gesture. Then Bones makes a discontented noise and pushes him up into a sitting position. “Let’s get you in the shower.”

Getting up without protest, still-half-hard dick brushing against his thigh, he follows Bones into the bathroom and lets himself be maneuvered out of his clothes and into the shower stall. Bones sets the sonics on a lower setting and waits, scrubbing a hand briefly through Jim’s hair. Jim leans into it, hands hanging awkwardly at his sides.

When he’s satisfied that Jim’s clean enough, Bones shuts the shower off and Jim steps out, tilting his face up for a kiss. Obliging, Bones presses his lips to Jim’s quickly before turning him and guiding his hips back until Jim is leaning against the bathroom counter.

Bones cups Jim’s face, running his thumb along the line of his jaw. He then picks something up from the counter, and Jim hears a quiet humming noise as he does something with it. It becomes clear what Bones’ plan is when he starts smearing shaving cream on Jim’s face. Jim holds still as Bones puts a steadying hand against his neck, thumb tucked under his jawbone to tilt his face up and to the side. The newly sterilized old-fashioned safety razor scrapes over his cheeks steadily and quickly, and Jim loses himself a little in the shave-rinse-shave-shave-rinse rhythm.

It occurs to him briefly that he’s naked, being shaved, and robbed of the use of his hands. Jim couldn’t concoct a more vulnerable situation for himself if he tried, and yet he finds himself getting sleepier by the minute, hypnotized by the look of perfect concentration on Bones’ face as his hands work their efficient magic.

Several moments later, Bones checks for missed spots with his fingers and then gives Jim a swig of mouthwash to swish around as he grabs a towel. Jim spits into the sink and lets Bones pat his face clean. Then he leans in for another kiss, getting a longer one this time now that he’s presumably less rank. Jim’s dick stirs a little again, reminding him that he’s naked and Bones is _right there_. But Bones pulls back all too soon, patting Jim on the ass as he orders, “Bed.” And not in a sexy way.

Jim goes, though. Shoving the covers back is about the only thing he can do with his hands, and he settles under them, listening to Bones go about his familiar nighttime routine in the bathroom. He orders the lights down to a murky ten percent.

Bones slides into bed a few minutes later, placing something on the bedside table near his head and curving his body around Jim’s. A warm hand skims up Jim’s side as Bones’ breath ghosts between his shoulders and over the back of his neck. Jim drifts, basking in closeness and familiarity.

“Jim?” he whispers after a bit, “You asleep?”

“Hmm? Mmno.”

Bones sidles impossibly closer, his lips brushing the space just behind Jim’s ear. “Still after some dessert?”

Jim perks up, the feather-light touch of Bones’ fingers on his hip suddenly very interesting indeed.

“Now, I’ve put a tricorder on the bedside table set to beep if your vitals spike above five percent of normal. That would be bad, considering. Think you can keep that from happening?”

Jim nods, biting his lip and concentrating on keeping his breathing even. He almost tells Bones, “Only if you stop talking,” but Bones drawling in his ear will definitely speed up the whole process, which seems to be the way to go as far as maintaining control.

“That’s good, Jim,” Bones murmurs, pressing kisses from Jim’s ear to his shoulder as his fingers roam over Jim’s rapidly firming dick. Jim resists the urge to gasp, his hands flexing impotently in the gloves. He wants to wrap his fingers around Bones’ wrist, he wants to bury his hands in Bones’ hair, he wants to clutch at Bones’ hip, he wants—

Bones’ hand closes around him and Jim whimpers. “Shh, I’ve got you, darlin’.”

Jim’s hips twitch as Bones strokes him slowly but firmly, so good it forces Jim to count out his inhalations and exhalations the way Spock taught him during their first few meditation sessions. Bones’ hand feels blindingly good, firm and sure around his dick. It’s been days, years, _eons_ since Jim’s had anything touch his dick with intent and what feels like longer since one of them wasn’t too tired or busy for anything but a stolen quickie.

Bones runs his thumb through the slickness at the head and Jim bucks into the touch, realizing that he’s probably going to come embarrassingly quickly, breathing exercises or no. Bones _knows_ him, and that means he can make him come undone with only a few efficient movements.

Jim starts to tremble minutely and Bones’ other arm sneaks under him, broad hand spread out on his chest, holding him steady. He keeps whispering quiet encouragement in Jim’s ear, the words blending together as Jim struggles to both relax and maintain control. Bones’ hand moves so beautifully, tortuously slow, his other thumb tracing a soothing arc over Jim’s sternum.

“You just let go whenever you’re ready,” Bones says, managing to talk over the rushing in Jim’s ears.

Jim whimpers again, biting the pillow because he can’t _touch_ anything and it’s not as though he needs the permission but the fact that he has it makes it all the more difficult to resist. Bones makes a sympathetic noise, brushing a finger over a nipple and adding a twisting movement that has Jim coming with a relieved sigh.

The orgasm is a lapping, rolling thing that leaves Jim sated and sleepy without the soreness and heaviness he usually expects from sex. He’s vaguely aware of being rolled onto his back and kissed softly on the mouth, and of a dry cloth that could be a t-shirt running up the insides of his thighs and over his sensitive dick. He hears the faint hum of the tricorder being waved over him and the sound of it being put down before Bones lies back next to him.

They spoon up together again, Bones’ pelvis snug against Jim’s ass and leaving very little to the imagination. Sleep is singing its siren song, but he can be a gentleman and it’s not as though he has to be on-shift in the morning, so once they’re settled and the only sound is their quiet, even breathing, he whispers, “Bones?”

“Mm.”

“Do you need any help?” Jim’s not so tired that he can’t come up with _something_.

“What’d I say about blue balls earlier?”

“Just because they won’t kill you doesn’t make them less unpleasant.”

Bones pauses for a moment, but says “I’m fine, Jim, really. You should sleep.” He runs his knuckles gently down Jim’s side. He worries too much for his own good. Jim sometimes wonders if Bones gets more satisfaction from watching him sleep or eat than most people get from a good orgasm.

He decides to wake Bones up with a blowjob as his eyes drift shut. He doesn’t strictly _need_ his hands for that.


	6. Chapter 6

+1.

“Bones,” he gasps.

“Don’t,” Bones growls, shoving him further into his quarters. “Don’t even try.”

Jim staggers backwards, holding his hands up placatingly. “Bones, I’m sor—”

“What the fuck did I just say, Jim?”

His mouth snaps shut of its own volition as Bones stalks towards him, angrier than he has ever seen him, not stopping until they’re toe to toe, seething mere centimeters from his face. Jim is anything but easily intimidated, but right now he’s very aware of every centimeter and pound Bones has on him.

“Now, I am genuinely curious what makes you think you can pull that kinda bullshit and get away with it.” Bones’ voice is pitched low and menacing, a cold-burning fury that Jim doesn’t know how to respond to. Sound and fury, signifying nothing, that’s always been Leonard McCoy’s M.O., so Jim figured he knew Bones’ anger inside and out by now. Jim was wrong.

Licking his lips, he squares his shoulders purposefully, pulling on his captain persona like a well-worn shirt.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, _Captain_.” The address drips with derision, landing like a blow. “I couldn’t care less what you _think_ gives you the right, I want to know where exactly you get off not only ignoring orders, but the advice of your entire senior staff, putting everyone in this ship and down on that planet in danger.”

“I thought—”

Bones moves impossibly closer, his hands fisting in Jim’s collar. “Did you, though? Or did you just do whatever the fuck you wanted and damn the consequences? It’s worked out so well for you in the past. Last time it was just this ship and a good portion of a major city. Oh, and your _life_.” Hot breath gusts on Jim’s face. “How many times are you going to be able to use that to clear the ledger?” Bones’ eyes are flashing, emotions flickering too quickly through the anger for Jim to make them out. Doubt, though, that one he sees very clearly, and it makes his blood boil.

“Is that what this is about? You’re still mad about that?”

Bones’ grip tightens, pulling Jim that much closer. “You _wish_ that’s what this is about,” he growls. “You died to save us and I made my peace with that. Hell, I even found it in myself to be grateful. No, this is about the fact that you refuse to learn and you refuse to trust the senior staff that you hand-picked.”

“I picked the best.”

“You picked what best suited you—your friends—and there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is expecting us to agree with you at every turn and sit down and shut up when you ignore us and do what you want anyway.”

“Are you speaking on their behalf or yours, Dr. McCoy?” As soon as the words come out of his mouth, Jim knows it’s the wrong thing to say. Bones’ eyes harden as he lets go of Jim’s shirt and backs up a step, but Jim just flexes his hands at his sides, tensing for a fight of one kind or another.

“Don’t you go thinking for one _second_ that this is about us, Jim Kirk. I’m not some teenage girl who pouts and throws fits when her boyfriend doesn’t pay enough attention to her. I am the CMO of this ship and I am equally, if not more, responsible for the health and safety of everyone on her,” Bones points an accusatory finger, “including you. So until you throw me in the brig or court-martial me, I’m gonna do my goddamn duty.”

Jim sneers. “What, and I won’t? You don’t think the life of everyone on this ship, _including you_ , doesn’t weigh just as heavily on my conscience?” He rips the gold tunic over his head and throws it as hard as he can across the room. “As captain, I _am_ responsible! If something happens, it’s on me and me alone!” He’s yelling and he can’t stop himself, torn between the desires to punch Bones or to collapse under the weight on his shoulders and let him pick up the pieces instead.

Bones just looks at him, disappointment in his eyes. And that hurts more than any rebuke or angry word.

“You’re brilliant, Jim. No one questions that. But you missed out on a lot of learning that most captains get along the way. Primarily the fact that you are _not_ alone and no one expects you to be.”

Jim snorts.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Bones just keeps talking. “You’ve got a lot to prove being the fleet’s youngest captain. I get that. Tacked onto the fact that you saved the world twice, that’s a heavy load to bear. I don’t envy you. And, yeah, you always manage to scrape by and live to fight another day. You’ve got survival instincts in spades. But don’t you get to thinking that if you keep carrying all that weight by your lonesome that it won’t crush you someday.”

Breaking eye contact feels like a concession, but Jim can’t watch every single fucking thing Bones is feeling play all over his face and still say what he has to. “Command means being alone. It’s lonely at the top, Bones. It has to be.”

“And where did you hear that, Jim?” Bones throws his arms wide, leaning forward. “Did they teach you that in all those command seminars? Tactics? They sure as hell didn’t teach that in the policy lectures.”

Jim lowers his voice. “You know exactly where I learned it. Command is sacrifice.”

“It doesn’t take a psych degree to figure out where you got that idea, Jim,” Bones says, sarcasm twisting his mouth. “So, what, then? You lead every away team and throw yourself in front of every crewmember until you’ve done your captainly duty and died saving them? Because if that’s what you think is going to happen, I ca—I _won’t_ watch you do that.”

Jim’s head snaps so quickly to face Bones that his neck protests. Bones just looks tired, the few well-loved lines in his face looking deeper and sadder than they did this morning. _It was only a matter of time_ , a nasty voice whispers in his head. _Too good to last._ The thought of Bones not being on this ship physically hurts, constricting his chest and making it hard to draw a full breath, but he somehow manages swallow around it and speak.

“Is that what you want? If you want a transfer order, I’ll sign it. Any ship or station would fall over themselves to have you. You’d have your pick.” Everything inside him is screaming _No, don’t, you can stop this_ , but he really can’t deny Bones anything when it comes to his happiness. Even at the expense of his own.

“Fuck you, Jim!” Bones shouts, suddenly volatile where he had been pure icy composure since the debriefing. “I know you’re not a coward, so stop acting like one. If you want to get rid of me, get rid of me. If I wanted to leave, I would damn well say so. So don’t put words in my mouth.” Looking away, Bones wipes his hand over his face, holding it over his mouth for a moment and breathing heavily through his nose.

“Look,” he says levelly after a few deep breaths, “I know that people in your life don’t have a habit of sticking around. And that’s done a number on you. In fact, that’s a gross understatement. You know it because you have access to your psych file, and I know it because I put it there. But I need you to open your goddamned eyes and see that I. Am. _Still. Here_. Despite all the shit you seem determined to put me through, I’m not going anywhere.”

“And I don’t understand why!” Jim cries, desperation cracking his voice. Everyone he ever trusted has hurt him or left him or both. Except for Bones. Bones has stayed through everything, even when Jim was trying to push him away, to hasten the inevitable before he got in too deep. But Bones stayed, frowning and complaining and utterly immovable.

“Oh, Jim,” Bones sighs, his face softening; a depth of sadness in his eyes that Jim’s only ever seen when he talks about his father. He closes the space between them and gathers Jim to his chest. Helpless not to, Jim latches onto him like a lifeline, burying his face in the familiar curve of Bones’ neck. He can feel the vibration of the words as Bones says them. “You don’t love someone despite their flaws and leave when the scale tips and you hit your limit. You just love someone, flaws and all.” Then, more quietly, “Lord knows I have my fair share.”

They stay like that for a minute, Bones’ cheek pressed against Jim’s ear, arms wrapped firmly around his shoulders.

“I love you, Jim, but I need you to slow down and let your crew—let me—help you. We all want to see you succeed, you have to know that. They care about you, and they’re worried. _I’m_ worried. Worried sick.”

Jim is surprised by the sob, frightened even, as it claws its way out of his own throat. Bones just tightens his hold, curling a hand around the base of Jim’s skull. “I just wish Pike—” he manages around shaky breaths, tears pricking his eyes.

“Hush, I know, darlin’. He was so proud of you. But he’d whoop your ass if he knew what you were getting up to.”

He feels his face crumple and shoves it into Bones’ shoulder as the tears squeeze out of the corners of his eyes and he holds his breath to keep from moaning like a wounded animal. He feels Bones stiffen as he shakes his head in vehement denial over and over, wiping tears and snot all over the shoulder of Bones’ uniform. Pike trusted him and fought for him and gave him a chance to be something and all Jim did was piss on the opportunity and disappoint him. And he’s still doing it.

“He was, Jim. He _was_.” Bones’ voice is strained, but sure. “I can’t tell you the number of times he asked me how you were—not how you were doing or adjusting, but how you were. He cared about you, captain or no.” Bones shifts Jim in his arms, pressing Jim’s face into the skin of his neck, forcing Jim to stay close so he can’t wrench away. “He asked me, after the meeting with you and Spock, before he met with the other admirals, what I thought of the whole situation. Because he knew we were close, and I suspect he guessed the rest, but once upon a time they say he and Boyce were drinking buddies, so who knows.”

Jim sniffs, listening intently, breathing shallowly as his chest jumps with swallowed sobs.

“And I said, if anyone on this planet deserves a starship, it’s Jim Kirk. That anything you did was to keep her and her crew safe. And if the measure of a captain was taken in love for his crew and his ship and the loyalty he got in return instead of how nice he played with the brass and how many regulations he followed to the letter, you’d be the best in the fleet. He frowned at that, but, you know me, I can’t keep my mouth shut when it counts, so I told him that you may be green but you learn faster than anyone I know and if they grounded you it’d be the stupidest thing they’d have done since giving you a ship in the first place. Because giving you the whole universe and then taking it all away was like giving a dying man in the desert a drink and then driving off and taking his canteen with you.

“And then, well, I waited for the dressing-down so I could be on my way. But he just looked at me with that poker face of his and didn’t say anything. You know what he finally said, Jim?” Jim chews his lip and waits. “He said, ‘Thank you, Dr. McCoy. I just wanted to be able to tell them I got a second opinion. I hear they’re in your job description.’ And that—” Bones pauses, trying to find a way to express the fact that that was the last time he saw Pike alive, “—was that,” he settles on. “But when I left, I knew he was going to go to war for you regardless of what I had to say. He was closing ranks. The fact he had come to me said he cared about who you kept close to you, and why.”

Bones’ hand settles heavily in the small of Jim’s back and he swallows. “I can’t say he loved you like a son, Jim; I wish I could. But the picture of you two behind his desk? The one from the official relief ceremony where he gave you his girl, smiling like she belonged to you all along? Well, it said a lot to me. So at the very least, the bare minimum, he was proud of you, Jim. Proud enough to help you be better. So don’t go sullying his memory by discounting that.”

Heaving a few more heavy breaths, Jim tries to compose himself, using the familiar weight of Bones’ fingers to ground himself. He’s right. “I don’t know how to be anything but invincible,” he admits quietly.

“Well,” Bones sighs, pressing his lips to Jim’s temple, “we’ll have to start small, I s’pose.”

Jim breathes. He keeps breathing. And then, after a few long moments, he lets Bones take some of his weight and sags into him, admitting with his body what he can never admit out loud. He’s tired, he’s unsure, and the weight of being a captain is sometimes too much for him to bear.

Bones rubs a soothing line up and down Jim’s spine before murmuring “C’mon,” and maneuvers them towards the bed. _Their_ bed, if Jim’s being honest. The one place on the ship he can just be Jim.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he manages a weak smirk as Bones crouches between his legs to pulls his boots off, but leaves his hands in his lap. He winces in sympathy when Bones’ knees crack as he stands up.

“Make-up sex, already?” he says because he feels like he has to, to maintain some of the painstakingly crafted Jim Kirk persona, but it’s half hearted at best. And it’s just Bones. Who simply rolls his eyes and pulls off his own boots, arranging the pillows against the headboard for him to sit up against and patting the space next to him. Jim happily accepts, curling into Bones’ side, laying his head against the broad plane of Bones’ chest. One set of fingers comes to rest against Jim’s neck, unerringly searching for his pulse, and the other laces between Jim’s, long and dexterous as they slide between his thicker, scarred knuckles.

Neither of them say anything, but Bones is the eerie kind of quiet he only gets when he’s waiting for something else to fill the silence. Jim’s not even sure where he would start. Instead, he focuses on the soft pad of Bones’ thumb tracing over the edge of his thumbnail in a slow rhythm that he suspects might be mimicking his heartbeat. Bones has a very intimate relationship with his heartbeat.

“I’m sorry,” Jim sighs resignedly, and squeezes Bones’ fingers between his own. He means _sorry_ for more than just today, because he should be saying it more often. He’s put Bones and the crew through hell too many times and brought them back limping and bleeding more often than not. And for what?

“Don’t, Jim.” Bones squeezes right back. “That’s not a road worth going down.” Jim frowns, but Bones presses his lips to Jim’s forehead firmly. “You’re smart enough to know that we don’t need or want apologies. We just want you to let us in.”

He wants to try, he does. But old habits are hard to break, and suddenly letting half a dozen people into his life when he barely allowed anyone even at arm’s length for years and years until Bones snuck under his defenses is a lot to ask. But he has to try. Because they trust him enough to put their lives in his hands unquestioningly, the least he can do is talk to them.

“Please,” Bones whispers, and Jim’s breath catches. Because Bones never asks for anything. Blusters and demands, but never asks.

“I’ll try, Bones, promise,” he says, trying to put more conviction into his words than he feels. “Just, I need you to . . .” He struggles to put it into words. Asking is a foreign concept for him as well.

“Anything. Always.” Bones is sure enough for the both of them, and that helps.

Fiddling with an old scar between Bones’ finger and thumb (horse bite when he was six), Jim stalls. “Don’t stop questioning me, I guess,” he says haltingly after a few minutes. “Call me on my bullshit. Encourage the crew to do the same. Pike listened to a stowaway instead of throwing him in the brig and it ended up saving the Federation. I should learn from that.”

“Jim—”

He soldiers on, ignoring the pang that always comes when he mentions Pike. “Not—not in front of brass or, you know, in the middle of negotiations. But pull me aside if you have to. Make sure I hear you.”

“I thought I _have_ been,” Bones says quietly, and Jim winces because Bones isn’t wrong. Jim just hadn’t been listening.

“I guess I need you to be more forceful. Talk to Spock if you have to. Make me talk through my decisions in debriefings. Gang up on me if you think I’m that far in the wrong. I might not thank you for it, but—but it’s better than letting me fuck up. Again.”

“Hey,” Bones grips his neck and tightens until Jim pulls back to look up at him. “No one said anything about fucking up. And I don’t _ever_ want to hear that kinda talk from you.” He gives Jim’s head a gentle shake. “Only I get to say that. And that’s only when you show up bleeding on one of my biobeds having done something fool-headed.” Bones’ face has softened to playful-stern, a smile shining in his eyes. Jim manages an amused huff of breath, a weak smile lifting one side of his mouth. Touching their foreheads together briefly, Bones says, more seriously, “No one died, Jim, that’s all I care about. Not you, not one of the crew, and no one down there on that planet. In my books, that’s a win.”

“I wish I could always look at it that way, Bones. But we both know my job’s more complicated than that.”

“Yeah,” Bones sighs resignedly, knowing all too well about Jim’s various “discussions” with ‘Fleet higher-ups. “Good thing you’re stuck with me, then. To remind you.”

“Yeah,” Jim says, turning his face into Bones’ hand as a gentle thumb traces over his eyebrow. He presses his lips to Bones’ palm, a quiet thank-you to the man and the hands that have given him so much. Everything he has worth having. “You have no idea.”


End file.
